Ground Shadow gone NVIDIA Iray [Solved-Kind of]
AbnerK
Posts: 718
Hi, I know this has been asked before but those threads seem to be talking about 3Delight. I'm using NVIDIA Iray and my ground shadow has gone. I don't seem to be able to get one back without switching on Dome. I've always used a ground shadow with Alpha channel then put a background on in Photoshop. Was I just not using NVIDIA Iray before or am I missing something?
Thanks.
Post edited by AbnerK on
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Comments
You wont get shadows without a light source but even turning the draw mode on the dome to off there should still be light to cast a shadow. The only other thing I can think of is that you have either Draw Ground off or the figure isn't on the ground, try Ctrl/d, Cmd/d on a Mac, to drop it to the ground.
I'm not so much of a muppet that I haven't got lights in the scene :-D Toggling Ground on or Off makes no difference without having Dome on and setting time for the sun to be up, in other words, my studio lights are not casting a shadow on to the ground, they are casting shadows on to the figure. As I said I've been using just the figure with shadow for ages now. I think I've used bacgrounds about 3 times.
Try setting Ground Position Mode to Manual.
No amount of toggling makes any differrence unless I add either a plane or I put Dome on with the sun in the sky. I don't want to do either of those as I want to have full controll in Photoshop and not have to waste render time on something that takes a second in Photoshop. I don't know what happened on Friday, but this has only happened since. It makes no sense that you can have 'Draw Ground On' and the 'Studio lights' cast no shadow on the ground yet put a plane in there and the Studio lights Cast a shadow on the ground or you have no plane on and have an artificial sun cast a shadow on no ground. I'm pretty sure I've not had to have Dome on before to have a shadow with an Alpha channel that I could aply to any background in Photoshop.
Here's an old thread about similar issues.
The only time the shadow disappears is when I turn Draw Ground to off.
Do you have Dome and Scene on with Dome on?
Draw dome is off, dome and scene. As I said the only time there is no shadow is when I turn draw ground to off. Did you try the Ctrl/D on your figure to drop it to the floor?
If you have Dome and scene set then you've got Dome set, it just isn't being drawn but you will have light emitted from it and if you have no light being emitted because you have the Dome set to midnight in winter then you won't get any shadows. What doesn't make sense is why can you have a shadow cast on the ground from a the Dome but not from a spot. I'm not a fool thinking that you can get a shadow with no light. I did physics but I've only been using Daz for six months and sometimes it crashes and sometime you click a setting and forget what you've clicked. I'm just trying to make sense of it.
It makes no sense that you can have a shadow on empty space from Dome drawn or not but not from a spot unless you set SS Sun Node to your Spot but that's just setting the sun's poition in the sky to your spot position and changine the spot tone or intensity does nothing. If, because Daz is not set up well enough to make sense then that's the answer to my question. I'll just have to have to create my own shadow in Photoshop, use a light I don't want to use or use a plane I don't want to use. I'm an aritst not a computer programer but that doesn't mean I think I can shadows in lightless cave or shadows on a thin air when your figure is 100 meters up.
Fishtales never said that Draw Dome> Off results in no light ("You wont get shadows without a light source but even turning the draw mode on the dome to off there should still be light to cast a shadow").
He has only been discussing Shadow removal with Draw Ground OFF
Is that not what I said?
Dome wont give much light unless there is an image in the map. Most of the light will come from the sun setting. I see you have yours set for midnight which means the dome and sun will provide very little light. Using an image in the dome, whether it is draw on or off will give light from the dome but you lose the sun. The amount of light from the dome will depend on the image, the map and the light intensity settings. The light from the image can be set to very bright or off 0.00. If you don't want any light from the dome then set the environment to scene only and then only your scene lights will contribute light to the scene. Shadows will always be there as long as Draw Ground is on and the figure is standing on it.
Facepalm!
Hands up! I was getting the wrong end of the stick. I thought you meant you weren't getting any shadows at all.
I've had time to do some checking and you are correct. The only lights to cast shadows under your settings, which I used, are the dome, sun and distant light.
In this image Draw Dome is off and Draw Ground is on. There is a Distant Light from the left, a Spotlight on the front legs, a Point Light as a disc on its rump and a Linear Point Light as a rectangle on the lower rear legs. The only shadows are from the Distant Light, I switched it off and there were no shadows. Sorry for the confusion. I'll put it down to age and tiredness :)
Don't worry Sandy, it's maddeningly confusing. I've been turned upside down with it today. I've said 'Dome' when I meant 'Scene' and visa versa and the edit feature could be better. To make things more complicated, if you choose one of your spots as the SS Sun Node, it places a 'Sun' where your spot is, which then casts a shadow of its own if it's big enough, say a disc. Then, if you turn off your spot and all the other lights you get an uplight. I assume it's a reflected light from the invisible ground. See my link. I turned off all my lights here. Seriously I checked and checked, and dome was set to midnight 21s't December in England. There should have been no light and there wouldn't have been had I not selected my turned off spot as the SS Sun Node.
I hardly slept last night for one reason or another and handled things badly. I said to my other half that I know, on any other day, I would have reacted very differently. I was trying to be really polite but everything was the worst it could be. Don't feel bad. You're only human as am I and Daz Studio is created by other equally fallible humans. We just have to learn to work with it. :-D
Enjoy the rest of your weekend knowing we've all learned a lot, I hope. I know I have. Thanks I wouldn't have without you. Oh the link. I couldn't post it here as I couldn't be bothered to put that underwear which, I horribly mismatched on.
https://www.deviantart.com/jimtmacd/art/Psyche-New-Test-No-Lights-764088820
Cheers. :-)